Author:Carol Tully
The four works collected in this volume reveal the fascinating preoccupations of the German Romantic movement, which revelled in the inexplicable, the uncanny and the unknown and, especially, the mysterious world of the fairy tale. Goethe's richly imaginative Fairy Tale (1795) depicts an ethereal underground realm and the marriage of a beautiful man and woman, whose union heralds a new age. In Tieck's Eckbert the Fair (1797) two outsiders seek refuge in the solitude of dark woods to conceal their incestuous passion from the world, while in Fouque's Undine (1811) a water nymph falls in love and acquires a soul, and so discovers the reality of human suffering. And Brentano's Tale of Honest Casper and Fair Annie (1817) portrays the tragedy of a young couple, destroyed by a false sense of honour and pride.
What i admire most is Su Tong's style ...delicate yet bizarre. His strokes are restrained but merciless. He is a true literary talent.
—— Anchee MinSu Tong writes beautiful, dangerous prose.
—— Meg WolitzerFor RAISE THE RED LANTERN, 'A remarkable story, subtle and profound'
—— The New York TimesSensual and tragic
—— Sunday TimesSu Tong's evocation of one family's destiny in 1930s China is stark and vivid in the extreme. A chilling and macabre tale, characteristically told with imagination and unflinching honesty
—— Time OutFor MY LIFE AS EMPEROR: Su Tong's Xie Empire is a dreamlike, beautiful, brutal place ...his prose is full of gorgeous images
—— Sunday TimesPraise for RICE: Su Tong has fashioned a cruel, heartrending and enormously passionate assault on the traditions of the Western novel. There's no love here; no redemption, no triumph of the individual. Unless you count the triumph inherent in Su Tong's overwhelming imaginative virtuosity
—— Rick MoodyBreath-taking ... Su Tong renders these people so vividly they possess of us, the individuality that they deny one another
—— Los Angeles TimesScorching ...spinning a plot featuring blackmail, adultery, incest and scandal, Su Tong creates visceral drama that moves rapidly in Goldblatt's fluid translation
—— Publishers' Weekly Starred reviewA riveting melodrama ... page by page, the novel stuns us with a sequence of hallucinatory, disturbing inventions ...Balzac and Zola would have recognized a kindred spirit in Su Tong
—— Kirkus ReviewsThese are stories that will sneak into the back of your brain and lurk there long after you are finished reading.
—— Global ReviewPoignant and wonderful story...concentrates, without effort, all Malouf's themes...it needs to be read
—— Prospect